


Words in your Mind

by darkwizart



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, Homebrew Content, Rune Knight backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25151461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkwizart/pseuds/darkwizart
Summary: Some tidbit about how one of my DnD Characters stumbled across rune magic and took up the mantle of an extinct tradition (or so he believes.)
Relationships: Original Dungeons & Dragons Character(s) & Original Dungeons & Dragons Character(s)





	Words in your Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Some info -  
> the game's setting is homebrew.  
> Wulfric, orc fighter and free-time alchemist, and Dary, firbolg rogue ex-pirate, are my two player characters I play, switching them out ever so often. Rasmus the firbolg cleric is Dary's platonic life-partner I play in *another* campaign.  
> (They also go by different names, since the games they live in started as AUs of a certain multimedia franchise i love ;) )

Wulfric’s hands glide over the carvings in the stone. “Do you hear that?”, he mumbles, more to himself than to his companions. Dary’s ears twitch in unease - this deep into the labyrinthine valley, there’s always something around the corner. They still haven’t found a trace of Rasmus since he vanished from the camp.  
“They’re humming.” He’s crouching down, studying the text in the wall. Neither he nor Dary can read them - the glyphs, ancient and weathered, are completely alien. Ancient, unmoving...waiting. Wheeljack pulls out his notebook. “Five minutes,” he promises.  
Dary gives a terse nod and returns to their post at the small gazebo-like structure’s door and counts the vines winding across the arches. The wind picks up, and eventually the sky above them releases a light rain. The stone sings.

ᚹ

Five days after they’ve moved Rasmus' unresponsive body out of the labyrinth, Wulfric’s still lost in the glyphs. He’s asked around town - it's a big enough place - but no one seems to be even remotely familiar with the intricate shapes. No one’s eyes light up in recognition, no one can read the sharp edges, the solid squares and trapezoids that fill more than half of Wulfric’s notes by now. He still can’t read them, but he knows symbols - knows when something waits to be said. The runes speak to him.

ᛟ

Rasmus has a lead. It’s worth a shot, so on their journey northwards, they stop by a weatherbeaten hill graveyard. Dary is careful to leave an offering - a small drop of blood on the soil before they head into a smaller hill near the center. This one’s unsealed, has been unsealed even before Rasmus found shelter from a storm in there many years ago. The entrance gapes open like a screaming maw and swallows them whole in its thick, time-lost shadows.

ᛗ

There is no grave inside - not even a dent in the floor. Dancing lights illuminate the curved ceiling and what’s carved in it: Jagged, interwoven shapes, angular and severe, covering the walls in their entirety. Details are off - some curves instead of trapezoids, some odd squiggly lines instead of angles and squares. “Looks worth a shot to me”, laughs Wulfric, and hopes Rasmus knows how truly grateful he is. Then he sits down and begins to write again.  
Dary rolls their eyes, but smiles while sneakily scooting up to Rasmus and the blankets he hogs. The guts of the tomb might be warmer than outside, but their friend is warmer still.

ᛏ

Wulfric begins to understand by pure chance - he miswrites, at first, the wrong lower half for one letter as his tired eyes skip a line in his notes. He crosses out the line, and something reacts.  
It takes him a few seconds to notice that the parchment is on fire, and he takes off cursing, looking for his waterskin to douse the flames before the wooden floors of the small inn room catch fire. When he returns, the flames are dead, and all that’s left is a glowing glyph on a charred piece of paper.

ᚦ

The runes react. They recognise, they combine, they change, and most importantly, they can be altered. No output without some input - a signature, an understanding. Wulfric can listen closer now, tries to feel for the direction a glyph is taking. Rasmus' theory on all of it is that Wulfric’s exposure to potent magical materials made him more receptive to the rune’s emanations, Dary believes they might actually live as the magic around them lives. Wulfric isn’t entirely sure he cares as he plunges one of his swords into the flesh of the abberation before him, sending a signal to the runes he carves into it: a preprogrammed agreement, result of a long year of combinations, experiments, and many now familiar spontaneous fires. The glyphs react, a chain of flames bursting from them, shackling the creature from the inside out. Wulfric pulls out the blade with a satisfying “schlock”, gives both his swords a spin and turns around before lunging at his next target.  
The metal sings.


End file.
